I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
I have few illusions about privacy -- feel free to follow me on Twitter: kashhill, subscribe to me on Facebook, Circle me on Google+, or use Google Maps to figure out where the Forbes San Francisco bureau is, and come a-knockin'.

How To Use 'Graph Search' To Facebook-Stalk Mark Zuckerberg And His Employees

A few lucky individuals have already started using the terribly-named “Graph Search,” Facebook’s new search engine. I am one of those lucky individuals.

Good news for snoops: the new tool will make Facebook stalking much easier. You can do micro-targeting that was previously available only through Facebook’s advertising tool — say if you were Gawker and wanted to find out which “Facebook employees like kinky sex” — and you can unearth information about friends and Facebook users with simple natural queries — say if you want to know which of the friends or friends of friends in your city enjoy “ lighting fires” and “running from police.”

According to Facebook, it’s not exposing any new information about users; searches will only reveal public info or info that other users have made available to you. But regardless, there’s sure to be some surprises as users find out what exactly is public on their pages. And Facebook’s aggressive move into targeted searches of people, places, interests and photos — which Google, Yelp, and LinkedIn will surely be taking note of — explains why, in its most recent privacy controls change, Facebook took away the ability for users to hide themselves from search.

To give you a sense of the stalking that what ‘Graph Search’ enables, here are a few potential searches. Given their attachment to the product, it only makes sense to use Mark Zuckerberg and the employees of Facebook as the targets for the new tool. You can search, for example, for every photo Mark Zuckerberg has liked:

Or better yet, every photo he’s commented on:

Of the marmot in the bottom right hand corner, Zuck says, “That guy seems pretty awesome.”

If you want to dine like Zuck — or with him, if you’re lucky on the timing — you can search for the restaurants he’s been to:

Perhaps you’d like to try to get into Mark Zuckerberg’s social circle. You can find out which of his friends are single:

Given the note at the bottom here and the fact that only one single dude popped up — and is a friend I share with Facebook’s CEO — I suspect this tool is not fully functional yet.

Or you can expand your search for possible mates to the whole Facebook employee base. A search for single Facebook types that are San Francisco-based turned up more than 100, and Facebook offered helpful suggestions as to find out more about them:

If you’d like to hang out with Facebook employees, you can find out where they drink:

If you want to have something to talk about with them at one of those bars — or in a job interview — find out which movies they like:

Or engage their literary tastes:

From now on, your Facebook stalking is limited only by your creativity in coming up with search queries. Have fun when you get your hands on it.

There are six of them.

Note: There’s a useful tool for seeing who can see the content that turns up in your search. To avoid Randi Zuckerberg-ing these folks, I only included here search results that are available publicly.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

I pretty much love this, I love that you can find stuff quickly because say I want to go and watch a movie. I can do a query on FAcebook to see which movies my friend Justin and Josh like, then it will be really easy to choose a movie. A Graph Search likes this opens so many doors to get things done and to know more about the people you friend. I can use this to find presents for birthdays, restaurants that we both mutually like, or make new friends that share the similar interests. Finally, we can search our own graph and make better use with the information we share. I personally would make all my interests public so people could know more about me but I will hide those interests that I want only my friends to know or even further, my family to know. Privacy features of Facebook lets you do that which is great.

I have to say, this takes the creepiness of FB to a new level. I think it’s time I just cleared a bunch of junk out of my profile. I haven’t really added much of anything in the last 5 years or so, but I really don’t want people saying, “Oh, he likes to eat at such-and-such place, I’ll invite him”….when it was a restaurant/bar where I used to study in college and is now halfway across the country.

For me, it just seems much different for someone to be looking for information about you and seeing that you like something, etc. And them searching for everyone who likes that same thing, and seeing your name come up.

Really, as you’ve discussed before, it is putting that information in a different context than the one in which I gave it to facebook, and I don’t like that.

If I were single, I can imagine I might want to keep this kind of info out there and available so that potential mates could find me, and I could find them. But now? No thanks.

Speaking of which (tangent here) I was always bummed with how simplified their “religion” choices were when I was FB stalking potential dates. I don’t want to just know that you’re Christian, but are you evangelical? Do you belong to a certain denomination? How interested or committed are you to the doctrinal distinctions of your denomination?

It’s called “graph search” because it uses Graph, one of the main pillars of the Facebook application.

What I find concerning about the press reaction to this tool is that it is clearly built on top of and out of the exact tools that Facebook has been providing to its vendors, partners, and customers (the businesses who pay Facebook for data) from its inception.

If the public does not understand this they have not been paying attention or even doing the minimal amount of research on what Facebook really does and how it works.

While most of this is hard to see from the user’s perspective, it is transparently available on Facebook’s developer tools site. If you want to understand what Facebook really does and the amazing invasion of privacy it is, this is the place to look. What’s amazing is that Facebook can be so confident about its public presentation that it can literally put this material out there freely available (as developers demand) while presuming that even most members of the public who care about privacy will never look at it:

Before we get carried away with how useful graph search is, we have to look at the relevance and meaning behind a “like” upon which graph search is heavily reliant.

You can buy likes on fiverr, kijiiji and craigslist to name a few. You don’t have to have experienced any of the things you have ‘liked’ – credibility, trust?? How many fake and multiple accounts are there on facebook for one real person?

Those two points are very important. If I search Django Unchained – the new Tarantino film and find out my friends have liked it, how does that translate to a recommendation for me to see it or suggest some review for the film??. Therein lies the limitations of the like button and the sudden propaganda of suggesting it’s more meaningful than it really is. I believe in review sites that have a meaningful validation systerm for the reviews. I know there’s no such thing right now but my company, @raveorbash is coming out with the solution later this year. I urge you all to think twice before swallowing this…